


Ghosts Inside

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Walking Yggdrasil [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bondage and Discipline, Dom Natasha Romanov, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Jötunn Loki, Loki Has Issues, Self-Hatred, Sub Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:33:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5960931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joining the Ravagers is really a lot more fun for Natasha than it should be. Loki, however, doesn't like being there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts Inside

There was no question about refraining from telling Yondu or the Ravagers the truth about the Infinity Stones. Loki had to tell a story of tricking a potential antiquities collector for the location of an ancient and very valuable stone, but wasn't sure if the collector had been told the truth. "It's supposedly on Lusatia," Loki had said. "But if this collector didn't go to get it, I have to doubt that it's true."

Yondu looked at Natasha, who sat calmly at the table as they discussed the particulars. "That sounds like it would be worth quite a bit."

"He made it sound as if it might be," Loki acknowledged.

"So what're you going to do with it?" he asked Natasha.

The smile she gave him was cold and bloodless. "I plan on keeping it."

"Not selling to the highest bidder," he said in disbelief.

"I like pretty things. Especially pretty bargaining chips."

"Bargaining chips," Yondu said, leaning forward. "You got someone after you?"

"Not yet. But it's only a matter of time, really."

"Not too optimistic about your chances, then."

"Realist," Natasha corrected. Her expression remained impassive. "The galaxy is a large and cold place. People don't work for nothing."

"And neither do I."

"I didn't think so," Natasha said with a shrug. "But I want that stone, you want people on the ship. It can work out."

"Or I take the stone."

Natasha laughed, a harsh and grating sound. "Good luck with that, Yondu. You lost the other precious stone you had. What makes you think you could keep this one?"

He glowered at her in annoyance and a touch of embarrassment. "Well," he murmured, nonplussed. Moving back a little, Yondu tugged his jacket straight to cover the emotion. "You think you could really keep it from me if I wanted it?" he asked, looking at her with his lips pursed in displeasure.

"I think we can do this dance until the galaxy explodes, and we won't get anywhere."

Yondu laughed, appreciating the comment. "See, I thought offering you a spot was a good idea. Now, the thing is, I remember that collector looking for that stone on Lusatia."

Without looking at Loki, Natasha raised her eyebrow. "Good. You know the one I'm talking about, then."

"He said it had sentimental value. What's your excuse?"

"None of your business," Natasha replied sweetly, smiling tightly. "Did you tell him the truth?"

"That it's on Lusatia?" At Natasha's nod, Yondu laughed again. "Of course not."

She leaned back in her seat while Loki sucked in a breath. "Of course, we can't tell if you're telling us the truth now, can we?"

"Nope."

"So what rathole of a planet do you suggest we go to?" Natasha asked.

"Actually, there's a space station we need to get to first," Yondu told her, a challenge in his tone. He flicked a glance at Loki, expression dismissive and deliberately poised to annoy him. "I need a keycard from there."

"Let me guess. Inaccessible, highly guarded, no one has ever stolen anything from there before," Natasha guessed in a bored tone. "Then once I get the keycard for you, it opens a door in another very inaccessible place, until we get a convoluted plot worthy of a video game."

"This ain't no video game, girl."

"And I'm not a girl."

Yondu pursed his lips but didn't whistle. "There's a reason for this keycard."

"Of course there is."

"You're not getting the whole story."

"Give me the parts I need."

The keycard turned out to be a way to open the supply closet for the space station. Within the closet were various items used to maintain the station, which on their own didn't cost much or was worth much. Mixed with other relatively innocuous components, however, it could make a volatile explosive that could corrode station hulls. The importance of the robbery taking place on this particular station and with that particular keycard was that it belonged to Jasso Irit, one of Yondu's competitors in the galaxy. Damaging his credibility would help get some of Yondu's reputation back; while helping Nova Corps allowed the galaxy to continue functioning instead of being destroyed at Ronan's hand, it fueled rumors that Yondu was going soft.

"I ain't goin' soft, so nobody better say that about me," Yondu declared. "Jasso gets fingered for the crime, I get myself the raw materials for explosives."

"That get used on what?" Natasha asked, eyebrow lifted.

"You don't need to know that part."

"I'm not involved in it?"

"Nope. But he's gonna be," Yondu said, grinning at Loki, pointing at him.

"You expect me to help you why?" Loki asked, irritated.

"Because you look almost hume enough to pass for the potential buyer of Gennaran spices. You are the distraction while we set the charges."

Natasha looked at Loki, shrugging with one shoulder to indicate it was his choice.

"Gennaran spices," Loki repeated slowly. "You don't want a pompous fool, you want someone strung out and reckless."

"Like I said. Hume enough to pass," Yondu replied. There was steel beneath his voice, the kind of sound that meant it could easily slide toward threats or the yaka arrow being whistled out.

"And what will I do while he's busy purchasing these spices?" Natasha asked, sure that the term spice wasn't being used in the sense of a cooking condiment.

"The keycard will still be with you. It opens up a few more places besides that one station. I'll need you to go shopping in Jasso's storage areas. I need something to sell for units."

Nodding, Natasha leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. "Anything in particular you want me looking for?"

"Something shiny and expensive."

Rolling her eyes, Natasha got up. "How long until we get to the station, then?"

"Nine hours."

"Then I'm going to rest up and sleep before we get there." She grasped Loki's arm. "He comes with me. You can prep him for his part in it later."

They walked through the corridors to the berth they shared on the ship. Loki's jaw was grit tight, his eyes glittering with irritation. "He _dares_ order me about like a servant!" he raged.

Natasha had thought this would happen. She pulled on Loki's shoulders after locking the door, yanking until his knees buckled and he was kneeling in front of her. "I am your Tsarina," she told him, voice cold and hard.

His jaw loosened a fraction. "You are my Tsarina," he echoed mulishly.

_"I am your Tsarina."_

Though Loki obviously wanted to snap back at her, he swallowed it down and nodded sharply instead. "You are my Tsarina."

She loosened her grip on his clothing and then nodded herself. "Good. Don't forget that."

"I couldn't. You won't let me."

Pinching his chin in one hand, Natasha removed a blade from her waist. Loki's eyes tracked it as he fell still, and she brought the spine against his cheek. She traced a pattern into his cheek, the Cyrillic for _mine,_ and let her lips curl into a lazy smile. "And who are you, when we're walking Yggdrasil?" she asked quietly.

"Leikr," Loki murmured, chin lifting proudly. It was close to his name, and meant weapons play, or battle. Still, he clearly didn't feel as though he lived up to it; Thor had told her once that Loki meant dark hair, and over time had come to refer to his mischievous nature on Asgard.

Her smile was soft and gentle. "So all of the problems were left behind you. They don't know anything but Leikr. They don't know anything more than you tell them, what you hint with your stance and your eyes and your responses."

Loki's lips trembled. "This is difficult."

"I know," she murmured, running the spine of her blade against his lips. "So I need to remind you. To mark you mine."

This close, she could see the way his lips parted, nostrils flared and eyes dilated. Loki might complain of such things in words, but he _needed_ this from her.

"Count in Allspeak," she commanded, and his brows furrowed for a moment, not understanding why she would request it. Slapping his lips with the flat of the blade had him start to count, a flare of panic in his eyes. She remembered stories of stitching up his lips as a punishment, and wondered if perhaps it had been more than simply stories.

Eyes locked together, over time Loki seemed to loosen up as he counted up to fifty. Natasha was good with languages, but it would take her some time to get the rhythm of the language and learn it for herself. There was likely a pattern in how the numbers were put together, but it was more important to track his body language than the pattern of the spoken words. She would have to make do with his translation spells, which were holding for the moment.

"That's good," she murmured, bringing the tip of the knife down the line of his throat. "Now I want to see you undress."

"Tsarina?"

"Down to the skin." She withdrew the knife, and let the tip of the blade rest against her full lower lip. "Give me a show."

Loki actually looked at her with a vulnerable cast to his eyes before he dropped his head and then gracefully rose to his feet. He took off his clothes slowly, layer by layer, but there was no sway in his hips, no slow tease, no sultry gaze through his hair as she would have done if she had been given the same request. Natasha thought of stopping him partway through, sensing his unease with this, but he didn't call out the safe word, didn't protest. The counting had taken him away from the immediate troubling mood, but it still rested beneath his skin, simmering and ready to boil over at the least provocation.

She had to do it now, so that it wouldn't happen on mission when Yondu inevitably antagonized him and pushed his buttons too far.

"Not good enough," she declared when he stood there naked, planes of his body exposed to her view. She curled her lip in distaste and lifted her chin a fraction. "I find you wanting."

In both senses of the word, but she wouldn't say such a thing.

Lip trembling, Loki glared at her and fisted his hands at his sides. His eyes flashed fire, but he remained stubbornly silent. It looked like he was gritting his teeth to keep from saying something, and she needed him to _snap._

"I suppose since you can't satisfy me, I'll have to do it myself," Natasha said nonchalantly, letting one hand drift down her front, over her clothes, until she cupped her own crotch. "At least then I know I'll do a good job."

He snarled, still not offering up any words. The tension in his limbs mounted, however; she could see the sharp outline of every muscle group. Natasha only smirked at him, lip curled as she rubbed her clit through her clothes. She wasn't in the mood for this, but that wasn't the point. She was going to have to take him apart, break him down to nothing, then build him back up again, and she only had a handful of hours to do it.

No pressure, right?

So she faked it, quietly mimicking bringing herself off, never once breaking eye contact with Loki, until she tensed and gasped, then let her body relax. Purring a bit, she grinned saucily at him. "Better than your tongue," she lied.

The expression on his face was awful, hatred and humiliation warring for dominance, that vulnerable cast to his expression again. Still he was silent, as if saying something would tip him over in one direction or another, as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to fuck her or kill her, if this charade was worth the agony she was putting him through.

"Kneel," she commanded.

Loki didn't budge, the glare in his eyes unchanging.

Languidly, Natasha got up from the bed and strode forward, still maintaining eye contact with Loki. _"Kneel,"_ she repeated.

Instead of complying, Loki snarled something in Allspeak that had to be a vile curse word, likely expecting her to hit him as she had before.

Natasha instead grabbed his loose hair in her free hand, twisting it around her fist as she yanked down, exposing his throat. Her other hand brought up the knife as she kicked at the back of his knees, forcing him to kneeling. Loki gasped, a thread of fear in the sound, the light in his eyes shifting slightly. He could use his magic, but there was still that part of him that needed this, that craved her guiding hand.

It was the honed edge of the blade at his throat, not the back, and he could feel the difference. She could tell by the way his nostrils flared, by the way his eyes widened fractionally when she moved the knife over the bump of his voice box. Was it correct to call it an Adam's apple if he wasn't even human?

"Useless," she said coldly. "Trash. _Monster."_ He flinched slightly, the tremble more pronounced in his limbs. His lips parted, his breath rasped, but he still remained silent. Natasha brought the knife down to his collarbone, the tip of the blade poised right at the notch. It was an incredible show of trust that he wasn't pulling out of her grasp, even as she tightened her fist and pulled his head back farther. "You expect me to say such things," she continued, which surprised him. "You expect me to humiliate you."

His mouth opened slightly wider, as if he was going to say something else. But instead of a curse in some language, he breathed "Tsarina."

A flick of the wrist, and the tip of the blade sliced into his skin. "You expect me to hurt you. To break you. To _destroy_ you."

Loki choked, but didn't respond in words. His tension had risen, and he was poised on a knife's edge over an abyss she didn't even understand.

"You don't want me to kill you. That's too easy an out. It would all be over then, punishment rendered in full, and you _know_ you need to suffer. You know you need to be punished, to be tormented, to be bound and delivered to your own personal hell." Her voice was impassive, eyes cold and clinical. "You don't deserve to get off so easily."

"Yes," he breathed, lips trembling and eyes suspiciously shining.

"And you want to tell me how horrible you are, cruel and callous, how _monstrous._ You want me to declare you vicious, nasty, murderous and brutal, vindictive and vile. You want me to call you _evil."_

Loki cried out when Natasha drew the knife down his chest, just the tip of the blade against his skin. It occasionally nicked him, beads of blood welling up. "Yes," he hissed when she yanked on his hair sharply.

"You expect all this. You want me to hurt you. To break you." She leaned down a little, her lips near her ear. "You think it's all you deserve."

"It is."

"So you prostrate yourself before a mortal, figuring you're debasing yourself."

"I am," he whispered, voice fracturing somewhat.

"You are a god of lies," Natasha hissed. "The mischief maker. The deceiver. The one so full of tricks that even you lose track of the truth."

Now Loki lashed out with his fist, catching her in the side. The knife skittered across his abdomen, slicing deeper than she planned to; she was caught off guard by how he struck out, and she wanted to kick herself for not paying closer attention.

Yanking on his hair hard, she almost could hear vertebrae grinding as she stretched his neck uncomfortably. She didn't bother to growl or snarl at him. He was baiting her, wanting her to punish him with physical pain instead of psychological, meaning she was absolutely on the right track with him.

"And that's it, isn't it? Mortals bested you at your own game. You knew you couldn't win, but you had too much pride to back down. And still you lost. Lost face, too."

This time, she was able to dodge his fist and twist the knife so it scored the inside of his wrist instead of stabbing his side. Loki didn't seem to care that he was bleeding, and it didn't seem to be severe yet. She would have to monitor that.

Natasha pushed her fist forward and brought Loki facedown to the floor. Twisting to sit on his back, she brought the knife to his spine. That stilled his hands and kept him from pushing up or trying to buck her off. "This skin is uncomfortable. You don't like being in it." There was a trace of amusement in her voice that she was sure he could hear, especially with the way he stilled, not even breathing. "I should skin you."

Loki made a choking sound, almost like a sob. "You can't."

"You think to tell me what to do?" she asked imperiously. "Who am I?"

He gasped and shook his head despite the fist in his hair trying to keep him still. He cried out when she shook her fist, and his hands were flat on the floor, knuckles white from pressing down so hard. Finally, after another shake, he gasped out "My Tsarina."

"You're fighting me today," she said, running the tip of the blade up and down his spine in a lazy motion. "Cutting too close, aren't I?" She leaned her weight in. "But then, that's what you want from me. You want me to cut you open. You want me to flay you alive, shred you from the inside out, tell you how awful and useless and disgusting you are."

A true sob escaped him, and she wondered how much of his soul she was scraping out of him, why it was suddenly fracturing.

Leaning down so she could whisper in his ear, knife at the back of his neck, Natasha whispered "You're a monster."

Instead of laughing, as he had in the helicarrier the first time they met, Loki sobbed "I know."

"Show me," she whispered. "Show me how you really are."

"I... I can't. I can't," he repeated, voice breaking.

"Show me," she repeated. "This will hurt. I don't lie to you about that. But this will hurt _so much_ if you don't do as I say, and you know I keep my promises."

She could feel the magic shimmer and flutter beneath him, his physical shape changing slightly as it did so. The pale skin faded into a gray-blue, not quite as bright a blue as Yondu's skin, and his hair remained long and wavy. He turned to face her as best as he could; she loosened her grip on his hair to allow the movement. His eyes were red, pupils black, and there were ridges in his skin, a pattern across his forehead, brows, cheeks and chin. Similar ridges continued across his chest and back, his forearms smooth.

There was panic in his eyes, self loathing and hatred that he didn't bother to hide. "Now you see me, Natasha."

Getting up and loosening her hold on his hair, Natasha raked her eyes across his body. Thor had mentioned that Loki was originally a Frost Giant, of course, but he didn't seem terribly giant in this form, and it seemed more a difference in coloration than anything else. His features were the same, and she could read him just as easily as before.

Trepidation arose in his eyes as she withdrew her belt. "Natasha," he began, not moving, voice breaking, eyes wide and shining.

"I am your Tsarina, Loki. Ground rules are still in play, remember?" she remarked. That startled him; clearly, he expected her to be as repulsed by this appearance as he was.

She lashed his wrists together with her belt; dimly, she was surprised he was letting her do this, that he wasn't trying to blast her with his magic. Something was festering in his mind, growing worse since Galion, and she didn't think it had anything to do with that place. Maybe it showed him up close and personal what evils there were in the galaxy, the pain that was commonplace, the insignificant cruelties that piled up and became insurmountable. He was used to being one of those things, the one that inflicted instead of the one that suffered. Now he was no one, leaving no mark behind, no one that would miss him if he died.

"Tell me about the Frost Giants. Tell me about the creatures moving around in the dark." She was really asking him to tell her about why he was so afraid of silence, of the lack of touch, of being too monstrous to be redeemed.

And it was sad, really. He spoke of the stories spun after Asgard's war with Jotunheim, the utter demonization of the Frost Giants, how cruel and primitive and backward they were, the evils used to keep little children in line. As she suspected, Loki had thought them nothing but bestial creatures that should be destroyed at all cost. He then told of being nothing more than another captured relic, held in Asgard to keep the Jotnar in line, the feeling of utter helplessness and worthlessness that came with discovering he was exactly the horrible creature he had grown up hating and vowing to defend Asgard from.

Oh, it wasn't in so many words, but she was adept at reading between the lines. Loki loved and hated himself, couldn't separate who he was from who he had to be, couldn't become anything other than himself.

A monster couldn't do good in his view, so he planned to be the best monster he was capable of being, even if it destroyed him. And it was.

Natasha had traced the ridges in his skin as he spoke, a tender touch that sometimes startled him into silence. When he trailed off at the end, Natasha straddled him and let her fingers run over his lips. "Not one of those words was a lie," she declared. He nodded, misery in his eyes. "You believe them so deeply, even when they don't make sense. Because you don't operate with logic, Loki. You're a creature of chaos, of emotion, all rage and pain and hurt. You're the aftermath of a disaster, not the disaster itself."

"You make no sense. Tsarina," he added hastily.

She laughed. "I'm sure I don't, not to you. But I understand you. And because of that, I can contain you. You knew that when you came to me. You knew I could do the things that you can't, and we're similar enough to understand why things have to be done."

Whatever he was going to say in response was choked off when she grasped his cock and started to stroke him. Her touch was light, gentle, nothing like the harsh way she had dealt with him earlier when he displeased her. "I told you that you would hurt," she murmured softly. "But I never said how. And there is more than just physical pain, Loki. You know that." Her smile was an edge, the kind that could slice off skin faster than the victim could realize. "You call yourself a monster. But then, you know that I am one, too."

Leaning in, she dropped her lips to his forehead, then got off of him and knelt at his side. "You were counting on that, of course, and you were right." She ducked down and kissed the tip of his cock. "And we monsters should stick together."

He gasped as her mouth closed over him, sucking him to full hardness. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she saw the agonized disbelief on his face as well as the desire. He saw himself as worthless in this form, after all, and couldn't understand what she saw in it.

So it was agony of a different type for him to watch her strip to the skin and then straddle him, watching her fuck herself on his cock, her hands digging into his shoulders and not caring one bit if he was blue or not. She bit her lip and groaned as she swiveled her hips, taking him in a little deeper. Her body tightened as she came, and it wrenched an orgasm from him. Natasha smirked at him and tapped his cheek with the flat of her fingers none too gently. "I didn't say you could come, Loki. You know what punishment that's going to be?"

"What?" he rasped, looking lost and confused. And really, that was a good look on him.

Natasha shifted off of his softening cock and knee-walked her way forward, until she was positioned over his mouth. It smeared his body with his semen and her own sticky wetness, and Loki had the same nose wrinkle of distaste that he had in the other form.

"You know what to do," she told him, voice husky. "Be a good boy, Loki. You know how to be one if you're motivated enough."

Maybe this time it clicked for him. She was treating him the same regardless of his physical appearance, and it really didn't matter what color he was, whether he was Jotun or Asgardian, as long as he did as he was told and fit the plan at hand.

He licked up the mess presented to him, and there was something almost gentle in the way he nuzzled her and brought her to orgasm again, licking into her reverently. Natasha climbed off of him and released his wrists. Loki remained sprawled on the floor, and she rested her hand on his chest, over a swirl of ridged skin. It reminded her of ritual scarification patterns, but she doubted he would have done such a thing. Frost giants likely inherited patterns; most cultures with coloring and patterning variations like that would attach rank, position, wealth or occupation to the markings. Natasha didn't know anything at all about frost giants other than what Loki had told her, and she doubted that most of it was accurate. It would have been Asgardian propaganda to justify the war they waged, filled with prejudice and spite.

"You have more faces than you realize," Natasha murmured. "This one, the Asgardian one, the Centurion one, the different species' guises you've worn." He was preternaturally still, red eyes trained on her face. She smiled at him, wry and amused at once. "Very useful for hiding and looking like whoever you need to be. If only I had that trick."

"You don't fear this form," he rasped.

"No. Why should I?" She shrugged and stood. "You're still you." Holding her hand out to him, she gave him a pointed look. "You don't know how to be anything else."

Loki frowned at her. "That sounds like an insult coming from you."

"I'm a spy. Of course it is," she scoffed, helping him to his feet when he clasped her hand. "Now we shower, and sleep until it's time for me to get that keycard."

Grasping her arm tightly, Loki stared at her. "Do not get harmed. Or caught."

"I know how to play the game, Loki. Sometimes, I don't think you do." At his frown she had to smile. "Not this one, anyway. You knew the old game and the rules of it. But here, you're on an entirely new board. Not pleasant, is it?"

"You talk in circles."

"You just don't want to admit you're out of control."

"Why does that make you smile?"

"I can control as much as I can. Doesn't mean it will predict everything, or that I can lever others to do what I want them to do. Sometimes, all you can do is ride the freefall."

His frown deepened. "I don't like that."

"I know. So trust in me, that I'll be able to follow through on what I promise."

Loki sighed and headed into the bathroom after letting go of her arm. "I think you're the only one," he muttered.

Quite possibly. It also seemed to shock him that she cared about soaping him up and washing him carefully, exploring his skin ridges with curiosity and speculation instead of disgust as he did. He didn't shift back into the Asgardian coloring when Natasha told him not to, and trembled as she slowly rinsed him clean. "Go dry off," she murmured, pressing her lips to his cheek as she pushed him out of the shower cubicle. She smirked at his confusion. "You could watch me shower, I guess, but I'm not interested in any more sex right now."

Like a lost creature, he did as she asked. He did watch her shower, but it was purely functional and not to tease him. She let him towel her off afterward, his own touch just as gentle and careful as hers had been on his body. "I hate how I look," he murmured.

She caught his hand and brought it to her lips. "I know. But I don't. And it can be useful."

"You think anything can be useful."

"Because it can be. The trick is to figure out _how_ it can be useful."

"I hate Yondu," he said, jaw tightening. "He's an arrogant, selfish bastard, and he's going to turn on us the first chance he gets."

Natasha managed not to laugh or point out the obvious. "I know. I don't trust him any more than we have to."

Sleep came quickly for them both, and Loki didn't revert back to his Asgardian coloring until it was time to get to the station.

***

Getting into the space station and then approaching the owner of the keycard Natasha needed was actually terribly easy. She had done more difficult missions in her early childhood. The drinks offered in the station mess hall were quite potent, and she was a master at the sleight of hand necessary to switch glasses. The poor girl had no idea that she was drinking twice as much as she should be, and was passed out in her quarters in no time. Natasha rearranged the girl's clothes and pressed red lips to various parts of her body, smearing it in places to make it seem as though they had _quite_ the good time. It would certainly explain the disarray, in any case, and the missing clothing.

The keycard and the girl's uniform on, Natasha went to the supply closet and helped herself to the components that Yondu had described needing. Heading off of the station with them would be somewhat difficult, but she put all of the items into large bins and headed toward a garbage scow that was being cleaned. Fast talking her way past the other staff in the hangar, Natasha brought the trolley of bins into the scow and locked it up. She had read up on the spacecraft that the Ravagers had, but the command deck looked nothing like what she had seen before.

Damn.

She opened a comm link to Yondu's hidden frequency. "You'll need to walk me through the flight check and interchange with the hangar crew for me to get out of here," she said without preamble. "I know how to fly different aircraft, and none of the controls are the same."

He gave an aggrieved sigh, but walked her through it, accurately describing the appearance of the buttons and switches she needed, and the pass codes he had used before. It would mark her passing as one of his people, but that was rather the point of it. The underworld community had to know that Yondu was staking his claim again.

Yondu was impressed by her haul, even if he didn't show it as anything more than a smug smile in her vague direction. "Easily three times as much as I thought you'd be able to get."

"I know how to pack for travel," Natasha replied with a shrug.

Flashing a toothy grin at Loki, Yondu lit up. "So you do." His gaze raked over Loki's Asgardian appearance, buckled leather and accented in green and gold, sturdy boots and vambraces to protect him in a fight. "Let's get this hume ready for his part."

Still in the girl's uniform and keycard in her pocket, Natasha gave Loki a smirk and a mocking salute. "Show 'em how it's done." She turned her back to them both, lofting an eyebrow at the Ravager that supposed to bring her to the second station. "Let's get going. We'll need to be in position by the time he makes the buy."

Yondu chuckled. "You're absolutely wasted on this hume wannabe."

Natasha looked over her shoulder with a smile on her face. "Just you wait, Yondu. He's full of surprises. You'll find we're both too good for you."

He laughed, and dragged Loki along with him, using a little more force than necessary.

***

Natasha's part in the play went off without a hitch. The keycard opened quite a few doors on this particular space station. The Ravager that had flown her in had been accompanied by another two men, who joined her in raiding storage rooms and the station's munitions supply. Natasha supposed that they were going to try to see about leaving her behind on the station to take the blame for it, and made sure to leave the keycard in one of their pockets. The stolen uniform was discarded in a trash chute, and she was in her Black Widow costume. The two Ravagers didn't say a word, but their gazes lingered. No doubt, they were wondering what else she would do that they didn't know about.

Another team had planted explosives, which went off in the timed sequence Yondu had planned on. The Ravagers had expected them, and Natasha only guessed that they were coming by the way they looked anxiously over their shoulders. She had her spoils back to the shuttle before the other two Ravagers realized that she meant to return with them, and only smiled sweetly at the pilot. "Time to go," she told him.

"Gotta wait," he grumbled, looking at the controls. He couldn't meet her eyes; maybe he hadn't agreed with the plan of leaving her behind.

"We're on the clock," Natasha reminded him coldly.

The reptilian Ravager raced into the shuttle before the other, who was shooting behind him. "I think we lost most of 'em, still got the goods. Most of 'em, anyway," he told the pilot. "Definitely lost the girl, though, so Yondu will be glad of—"

He cut himself off when Natasha cleared her throat and spun around in her seat. "So sorry, boys. You'll be splitting the take on this after all."

"Dock and run!" the Ravager in the back shouted as the bay door shut.

Still grumbling, the pilot went through the sequence and took off. Natasha made sure to observe how it was done for future reference.

***

Yondu kept his surprise well in check when he saw Natasha stroll aboard with a sizeable haul of her own. "I guess we still get our share, hm?" she asked sweetly.

He laughed and shrugged. "Can't blame me for trying." His eyes flicked behind him. "You weren't kidding when you said your boy had tricks up his sleeve."

Loki was in frost giant blue, red eyes glaring at Yondu. "He's just sorry he can't kill me."

"I said you could sell those spices you got."

"I certainly have no interest in using them," Loki snarled.

"You still got the keycard?" Yondu asked Natasha in too casual a tone.

"Ask your boys," she said with the same smile on her face. "I'll keep what I got, I think." She nodded toward the two of them. "Between the explosives components and what they were able to get, that more than breaks even for what the cost of passage is."

"Depends on what you got in your haul."

"I suppose we could make a trade."

Laughing outright, Yondu sat down at the table across from her. "Well, then, little lady. Let's make a trade. I know you want to know where that orange stone is, and that kind of information is going to cost you. A lot."

"Everything costs a lot," Natasha replied, not impressed. "Our own services are certainly not for free, either. So take that into consideration."

"I have. For cost of passage so far. You did me a good turn today."

"Not good enough to keep you from tossing me to authorities."

Yondu shrugged, not sorry at all. "If it's you or my boys, you know who I'd pick."

"Should've been me, given how sorry some of their skills are," Natasha replied evenly. Then she smiled and shrugged herself. "But I suppose loyalty counts for more than skill."

When the Ravagers from the shuttle lifted their guns, Loki snarled and lifted his hand. A blast wave of magic threw them back, into the bulkhead, knocking them out.

Loki stared at Yondu with a defiant expression, and stood beside Natasha. "I think we should renegotiate terms," he said, his voice silky smooth. He sounded more like the Loki Natasha had heard during the Battle of New York or when he had come to her at the Avengers complex. He didn't have the same presence from that time, though, so he wasn't quite back to where he had been at that time.

But he was better now than he had been the day before, as if the ghosts he'd held had been completely exorcised. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Natasha was going to have to be on her toes with him as well, too.

The End


End file.
